Step 1: Cut plastic bags into strips

Follow a spiral pattern around the bag to get one long strip from the entire bag. Don't use your best sewing scissors for this. Cutting plastic bags dulls scissors quickly.

Step 2: Attach end of plastic strip to spindle tip and spin

Spindles are the simplest way to spin fiber, or plastic bags. The pictured spindle is a round piece of wood with a dowel glued through it. The end of the dowel has two narrow saw cuts at the end to attach the end of the string to .

Once attached, grab the spindle by the point of attachment and spin between your fingers. The weight on the bottom keeps the spindle spinning. Hold the plastic strip in your other hand and pay out the strip as it twists into yarn.

Step 3: Continue spinning

As the spun yarn gets longer, wrap the yarn around the stick portion of the spindle and re-attach at the tip. Keep goiing.

Step 4: Spin together two strips of plastic

When you get to the end of one strip of plastic, you don't need to tie one strip to the next. Just overlap the two ends, fold them together and continue spinning. The twisting together will be enough to join the two strips.

Step 5: Knit your plastic yarn

Sadly, I don't have action pictures of this step. The bag shown has a very simple pattern. The body of the bag is a long strip of nothing but knit stitch. The handles are another long strip of the same stitch. The two pieces were sewn together using more plastic yarn.

This bag was a first attempt. Some suggestions for improvement.

1. The fabric is surprisingly heavy duty. Keep to purse size, or make something you don't plan on lugging around. This large tote bag is a little bulky.
2. Have fun with color.

Just a thought...you don't actually need to spin the plarn. If you cut the bags through both thicknesses, and from side to side, making them into strips, you get pieces that are kind of shaped like rubber bands, except bigger and plastic! You can then "link" them together to form one long continuous strip. That makes them twice as thick...but it should be faster working them. :)

What type and size of needles did you use to knit up the "plarn" (Plastic Yarn)? I put my kids to work helping me make lots of plarn, but from joined loops of bags instead of long strips. My problem arose when I tried knitting -- the plarn was so "grabby" and sticky on the needles (I tried nickel and wood both) that it was torture to complete even a few rounds. Perhaps the smaller diameter of the spun "plarn" makes it easier to knit.

That is so awesome :D Hmm. I'm gonna see how much it costs to get the spindle and such. In my opinion, I find find knitting/crochet more relaxing than the sewing machine. I started sowing and I dunno how to get the bobbin thread underneath. It's such a headache and when you finally get the thing ready, it JAMS and clumps the thread. Ugh!

One standard grocery bag yeilds about 15 feet. I timed myself spinning the strip at about 3 minutes. I suspect you could make better time with a spinning wheel if you had one. Cutting the bags takes some time too. I think if you were to do lots of these, you'd want to rig some sort of a spinning drum to put them on, then slice with a knife as the drum spins

Good idea. I was going to make almost this exact same instructable for the go green contest awhile back, but I was going to braid the bags instead of spinning/knitting. I think knitting is a better idea.

Terrific idea. Awhile ago the about.com site had a page on how to crochet a sleeping bag out of plastic bag strips but sadly that page no longer exists. Still, the yarn making step was nowhere near as efficient as this one. Nice job!